Following Rubs

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JMAR85
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Following Rubs

Unread postby JMAR85 » Mon Feb 27, 2017 11:08 am

Does anyone follow rub/ rub lines in an attempt to locate beds?


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Re: Following Rubs

Unread postby Tennhunter3 » Mon Feb 27, 2017 11:41 am

I do if they are in a area i suspect buck bedding within a close distance say 200 yards. It also depends On the slope they are headed torwards are going into much thicker cover or along a transition line.

I don't just follow rub lines all over open hardwoods. The more open it is more i tend to ignore it since i think its his nightime travel route.

A few bedding areas ive found lines that led me within 60 yards of the beds but the lines for me has not gone directly to a bed.

They might act differently in farm terrain or marshes ive never hunted that kind of terrain.
Last edited by Tennhunter3 on Mon Feb 27, 2017 11:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Following Rubs

Unread postby Hawthorne » Mon Feb 27, 2017 11:46 am

Not toward bedding but heading away from bedding I have found rublines and clusters. Some of the rubs were made coming to the bed but I usually found them after the bed. I'm only in my 3rd scouting season looking for beds tho
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Re: Following Rubs

Unread postby JMAR85 » Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:04 pm

I should have worded it better, I meant more on the lines of back tracking them. This past Saturday I was scouting around a clear cut and I was following a bottom away from it and found multiple large rubs heading in the direction of the cut right in a row. It seemed to me that he would have made them in the evenings heading toward the cut. I was wondering if I could back track them to find the bed but I was running short on time.
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Re: Following Rubs

Unread postby cbay » Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:09 pm

My buck this year I knew within about a 100 yards where he would bed if he was in that area. He had a rub line lit up heading the same way i drug him out.
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Re: Following Rubs

Unread postby JoeRE » Tue Feb 28, 2017 3:44 am

Yes! Every nice tall looking rub I find in thicker cover around bedding I pay pretty close attention to. Its probably on a travel route. Some guys think a lot of rubs are "random" but what I have seen, the random stuff is mostly clustered around food sources. Might be crop fields, might be acorns, but if deer are spending all night there, probably is a lot of sign.

Earlier in my bow hunting education I would get fooled into thinking those big clusters of rubs around food were "staging areas" but decent bucks weren't showing up till after dark. That by itself can be a sign you are looking in the wrong spot - if there are a ton of rubs facing all different directions, its probably night time activity just because bucks are clearly spending a ton of time in the area, probably not in the day...

Back closer to bedding most rubs are in spots that make sense. Bucks do not spend a lot of time on travel routes, they are going somewhere by definition. Rubs are either in bedding cover next to beds (occasionally clusters of them there), or on travel routes to and from. Look at each rub as a vector - an arrow pointing a certain direction. If it helps draw an arrow at that spot on a map pointing the direction the buck was facing. You will start to see the travel routes really fast that way.

This is one of the main ways I figure out travel routes because traffic in and out of buck bedding is often very light. Very light trails or no real trails. There are just a lot more does in doe bedding areas to make those heavy doe trails.

I don't see clear rub lines that stretch hundreds of yards hardly ever though. Only one example of that have I seen. More often its just 3 or 4 rubs in a row maybe 200 yards from suspected bedding. But that can mean a lot. The best ones I have found are several perennial rubs along a travel route. When bucks are using a trail every year for several years, you better pay attention and try to figure out if they are there or nearby in daylight. Its a major travel route for some reason. Sometimes its a bed to food travel route, more often its a rut travel route.

For instance, this perennial rub in the photo below is on a rut cruising route through a major doe bedding area. Bucks do bed on one edge during the rut, they get up and come through the center. At first glance its hard to tell where to set up, but there are half a dozen perennial rubs like this one in a general line THROUGH the bedding. Not on an edge, they come sort of diagonal through the thicker cover just because of the way the land lays. I have hunted it several times over a decade and the majority of buck activity was along this travel route. I also had a trail camera on it one fall and saw the same. If these rubs had not existed, no one would guess w/o observing just how the bucks move through this area.

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Re: Following Rubs

Unread postby dan » Tue Feb 28, 2017 5:15 am

I have seen a lot of rublines that have more to do with doe bedding, or travel wroughts, or food. Following rublines in my opinion is worthless unless they are coming out of suspected bedding or your using it for rut hunting. I do obviously pay attention to rublines coming out of bedding, but often, they don't start up till you get a good distance from the beds. I would say find the beds 1st, then look at the rubs coming out. I monitor rublines coming out of bedding for activity during the season and have killed bucks by hunting a certain bedding area when the rubs become active.
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Re: Following Rubs

Unread postby JMAR85 » Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:13 pm

JoeRE wrote:Yes! Every nice tall looking rub I find in thicker cover around bedding I pay pretty close attention to. Its probably on a travel route. Some guys think a lot of rubs are "random" but what I have seen, the random stuff is mostly clustered around food sources. Might be crop fields, might be acorns, but if deer are spending all night there, probably is a lot of sign.

Earlier in my bow hunting education I would get fooled into thinking those big clusters of rubs around food were "staging areas" but decent bucks weren't showing up till after dark. That by itself can be a sign you are looking in the wrong spot - if there are a ton of rubs facing all different directions, its probably night time activity just because bucks are clearly spending a ton of time in the area, probably not in the day...

Back closer to bedding most rubs are in spots that make sense. Bucks do not spend a lot of time on travel routes, they are going somewhere by definition. Rubs are either in bedding cover next to beds (occasionally clusters of them there), or on travel routes to and from. Look at each rub as a vector - an arrow pointing a certain direction. If it helps draw an arrow at that spot on a map pointing the direction the buck was facing. You will start to see the travel routes really fast that way.

This is one of the main ways I figure out travel routes because traffic in and out of buck bedding is often very light. Very light trails or no real trails. There are just a lot more does in doe bedding areas to make those heavy doe trails.

I don't see clear rub lines that stretch hundreds of yards hardly ever though. Only one example of that have I seen. More often its just 3 or 4 rubs in a row maybe 200 yards from suspected bedding. But that can mean a lot. The best ones I have found are several perennial rubs along a travel route. When bucks are using a trail every year for several years, you better pay attention and try to figure out if they are there or nearby in daylight. Its a major travel route for some reason. Sometimes its a bed to food travel route, more often its a rut travel route.

For instance, this perennial rub in the photo below is on a rut cruising route through a major doe bedding area. Bucks do bed on one edge during the rut, they get up and come through the center. At first glance its hard to tell where to set up, but there are half a dozen perennial rubs like this one in a general line THROUGH the bedding. Not on an edge, they come sort of diagonal through the thicker cover just because of the way the land lays. I have hunted it several times over a decade and the majority of buck activity was along this travel route. I also had a trail camera on it one fall and saw the same. If these rubs had not existed, no one would guess w/o observing just how the bucks move through this area.

Image


This is great stuff..
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Re: Following Rubs

Unread postby JMAR85 » Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:17 pm

dan wrote:I have seen a lot of rublines that have more to do with doe bedding, or travel wroughts, or food. Following rublines in my opinion is worthless unless they are coming out of suspected bedding or your using it for rut hunting. I do obviously pay attention to rublines coming out of bedding, but often, they don't start up till you get a good distance from the beds. I would say find the beds 1st, then look at the rubs coming out. I monitor rublines coming out of bedding for activity during the season and have killed bucks by hunting a certain bedding area when the rubs become active.


How far away from bedding do you see rub lines starting up? I found a rub line this past Saturday but ran out of time looking for the bed. It's definitely a mature buck that left them and would like to go back and try to find the bedding.
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Re: Following Rubs

Unread postby Stanley » Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:40 pm

Lot of good information here. I kind of go along with Dan for the most part. Rubs are made when Buck goes from point A to point B. The buck isn't going over to a certain area to make rubs. :think: If a buck is bedding in an area he will make rubs along his travel route to a food source or a water source.

So when the buck changes food sources and uses the same bed the rubs will be on a different route. The buck may also change bedding areas when the food source changes. This is why you see rubs all over the place as the season wears on. Bucks also do a lot of rubbing when tending a doe. If you know where the bedding areas are you can kind of determine where the rubs will be. :think: So for the most part rubs can help the hunters that don't know where the bedding areas are find them.

If you have a good bedding area scoped out and you know where the food source is rubs won't help you much, if at all. When using rubs to locate buck bedding, chose wisely my friend. You could be on an old route or the buck may not be alive. This happens quite often where I hunt. :think:
You can fool some of the bucks, all of the time, and fool all of the bucks, some of the time, however you certainly can't fool all of the bucks, all of the time.
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Re: Following Rubs

Unread postby JoeRE » Tue Feb 28, 2017 2:50 pm

Yea Stan I agree. Just like every other deer sign out there, bucks put down rubs in a place for a reason. Gotta understand the reason to understand the rub. Most scrapes are made at night. I am sure most rubs are made at night. That's why I say step back and look at the big picture.

Buck travel routes are like a spiderweb across his range I think. Different parts of the web are used for various reasons at different times of the year. Rubs really help me understand that spiderweb.

I've never just hunted a rub, hope that's not how my first post came across. I have hunted near rubs made by a target buck plenty of times, because they were in the same spot as a good set up just by coincidence, and I use rubs to figure out travel routes and therefor help narrow down potential setups.

I have heard of guys in the northwoods hunting rubs, and killing bucks doing it. But with super low deer densities and in the big woods that's a lot different situation.

In 2015 I was after a public land brute. 160 class, 5 years old I think, wrote a lot about him in my journal that year. Those are rare as hens teeth on public around here. I came pretty close to killing him a couple of times but had the feeling it was luck at the time because there was a lot I couldn't figure out about him. I did not know how he moved between two parts of his range on each side of a long steep valley. He would bounce back and forth during the rut. I had cameras on the main crossings and did not get him. The season ended (and he disappeared that gun season) but last spring, 2016, I found a couple BIG TALL perennial rubs on opposing side hills a full 150 yards below the main crossings. They were pointing toward each other, meaning the deer was crossing the valley there. I took some extra time and tried to figure out what they meant. I found a faint trail there across the narrow valley and then I found a couple worn beds on each side hills near those rubs too. If I had just noticed those rubs scouting a year earlier in spring 2015, I have a strong suspicion I would have then found that travel route and the beds and would be looking at that buck on my wall. He loved to flip sides of the valley almost daily during the rut.

The cool thing is another mature buck was using that exact same travel route in 2016. They use it because all the main crossings high and low get hunted, and that middle crossing is almost foolproof but I have been testing winds to see what I can get away with this spring. If I see any sign of him this coming year, I know where to kill him. All because I first saw a big perennial rub half way down a steep side hill (well below the military crest) and knew there must be a reason.
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Re: Following Rubs

Unread postby magicman54494 » Tue Feb 28, 2017 3:17 pm

I pay attention to them because they are like fingerprints. I note every one because they help me put together travel routes. For the most part, the real large rubs are what some people call sign post rubs. These will usually be at intersections of travel routes that are used year after year. These seem like a great place to hunt but I would only sit them during the rut. Anyway, to answer your question, I don't try to backtrack to find bedding. I read the woods to find bedding then usually find some rubs near the bed. Then I memorize the rubs so I can try to establish how he travels.
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Re: Following Rubs

Unread postby dan » Tue Feb 28, 2017 10:28 pm

Where we did the workshop on Saturday is a very large area... We straight lined a pathe from one side of the public to the other, that was over 3.5 miles one way, and the area was about that wide. However, almost all of the mature buck bedding is down in the cattails and dogwood. Its in the spots where there is water surrounding the beds on this property... Try and find rubs there... You will, and even a couple rublines along the transition a hundred yards or so from bedding. But its nothing like the giant rublines, and perennial rubbed trees that you find over a mile from the bedding where there are crop fields and oak trees on the public land. The sides of the fields are littered with big rubs and rublines. Almost as many rubs as trees stands... But you very, very, rarely see a mature buck, or any buck for that matter, that far away from the bedding... Not even in rut. I have been hunting there for over 2 decades and have killed probably close to a dozen good bucks in that stretch of public. Seen many more. I can only recall a couple that were not bedding in the cattails over a mile from the rubs and crops... Those rubs are useless to me except that they attract attention and keep it away from where the bucks really are... Everytime I see a big buck shining in those crops, or catch a trail cam pic, I end up seeing or killing it down in the bedding area. Over a mile away...

Certainly every situation is different, but, I would try to determine where the bucks bed and hang out in daylight prior to deciding if a rub is worth looking at.
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Re: Following Rubs

Unread postby JMAR85 » Tue Feb 28, 2017 11:45 pm

magicman54494 wrote:I pay attention to them because they are like fingerprints. I note every one because they help me put together travel routes. For the most part, the real large rubs are what some people call sign post rubs. These will usually be at intersections of travel routes that are used year after year. These seem like a great place to hunt but I would only sit them during the rut. Anyway, to answer your question, I don't try to backtrack to find bedding. I read the woods to find bedding then usually find some rubs near the bed. Then I memorize the rubs so I can try to establish how he travels.

That really makes a lot of sense. Thanks
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Re: Following Rubs

Unread postby JMAR85 » Tue Feb 28, 2017 11:54 pm

dan wrote:Where we did the workshop on Saturday is a very large area... We straight lined a pathe from one side of the public to the other, that was over 3.5 miles one way, and the area was about that wide. However, almost all of the mature buck bedding is down in the cattails and dogwood. Its in the spots where there is water surrounding the beds on this property... Try and find rubs there... You will, and even a couple rublines along the transition a hundred yards or so from bedding. But its nothing like the giant rublines, and perennial rubbed trees that you find over a mile from the bedding where there are crop fields and oak trees on the public land. The sides of the fields are littered with big rubs and rublines. Almost as many rubs as trees stands... But you very, very, rarely see a mature buck, or any buck for that matter, that far away from the bedding... Not even in rut. I have been hunting there for over 2 decades and have killed probably close to a dozen good bucks in that stretch of public. Seen many more. I can only recall a couple that were not bedding in the cattails over a mile from the rubs and crops... Those rubs are useless to me except that they attract attention and keep it away from where the bucks really are... Everytime I see a big buck shining in those crops, or catch a trail cam pic, I end up seeing or killing it down in the bedding area. Over a mile away...

Certainly every situation is different, but, I would try to determine where the bucks bed and hang out in daylight prior to deciding if a rub is worth looking at.


Dan this really helps. I've been struggling to find beds on this one piece of public I hunt, it's a mountain setting. I found an area a month or so ago that was very very rubbed up and I was spending a lot of time scouting around this area thinking that the buck had been bedding somewhere in that area but didn't find a bed. This past weekend I went back to the area and wondered over to the crest of the mnt (about a 1/4 mile away) and started walking the military crest and found a pretty decent 5pt shed and a worn bed within minutes. The bed didn't have any rubs near it though. When I find beds like this on the military crest with no rubs, how do I know if this is a bed worth hunting come fall?


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